No. It’s not the 1st of April and that means that this story is true. The police department of the City of Alvarado in Veracruz, Mexico, got their guns confiscated by state authorities after most of its members failed to pass proficiency tests.

According to Newsweek, only 30 out of the 130-member police force were able to pass the tests, making the authorities confiscate their firearms until they have completed and passed their training. For the meantime, they are not fully accredited police officers. In protest,  claiming it to be a political move and that the police force is mainly made up of new recruits, the Mayor of Alvarado, Bogar Ruiz Rosas, decided to go for a low cost alternative to arm his police force--- with slingshots.

In a ceremony last 28 June, the Mayor was seen handing slingshots and bag of stones to the members of the police department. He said that this was a political vendetta against him before the recently held national and elections. He belongs to the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico which is an ally of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which lost the presidential elections to Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) Coalition. The PRI has been the most dominant political party in Mexico since it was founded in 1929.

The governor of Veracruz, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, is from rival political party, the National Action Party (PAN), and his son ran to replace him only to lose to Cuitláhuac García Jiménez of the MORENA Coalition.

Veracruz was left a very much impoverished state when its former governor, Javier Duarte de Ochoa, was said to have millions of dollars of public money in various shell companies. He was declared a fugitive and captured in Guatemala after six on months on the run. The slingshot ceremony was conducted at a location where 47 skulls were discovered in a mass grave and over 20 journalists have been killed in the state in over 10 years.

Should you disarm airsoft players who are inept at handling their airsoft guns? If you do, please do not equip them with slingshots as they will still do even more harm with them. Arm them with NERF guns, better yet, water guns.

Top Photo: Bogar Ruiz Rosa, Mayor of Alvardo, holding a slingshot (Photo Credit: Alvarado municipal government)